Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Surrealist Prose Poems By Giorgia Stavropoulou

Giorgia Stavropoulou is an MFA candidate with the Manchester School of Writing, UK, living in California. Currently she’s working on a novel but she also writes poetry inspired by the work of LA based surrealist poet Will Alexander. Other influences are Indian surrealist author of short fiction Naiyer Masud and the fiction of Roberto Bolaño. Her work has been published in journals and in an anthology. Sonic Pisces Swimming in Skin Part I When you talk, you can’t see themBut they’re in you, and around youYou can feel them with your lipsSmall slimy ones gently zigzag out of your vocal cords They escape through your mouth when you whisperSlow inert ones crawl out of your throat; You can feel their scales when you talk while drunkFast shark-like ones bust out of your faceThey irritate your esophagus when you shoutThe fish I’m talking about areAcousticTheir scales sonicThe fibers of their flesh: decibels and particles They appear beneath the surface of your skinYou can see the contours of their floundering fins Their twisting tailTheir almond-shapeWhile stroking their hideWhich is, of course, your own skinThe Sonic Pisces ovulate SyllabsPart IIInside me sonic Pisces swim in sandIn and out of my skinAnd back into my mouthMillions of scales rub my lipsThousands of fish wriggle through my fleshLike parasitic worms, larvae made out of soundThey exit my eyesAnd float on the surface of my gazeThese words have fins and gillsRubbing themselves against my face I can feel their slimy scalesAnd with slime and mudThey re-draw my maskAfter repainting my shapeThey dive back into my peltI touch my faceMy fingers penetrate my liquid hideThe mud has changed into clayAnd I mold my meatMy cheeks, my mouthMy chin, my nose, And my eyesI am the sculptor of my own skin A Room Not of My Own

Something is cacklingSomething cracks

Something crackles and crumbles

Moving through and out of the walls of this roomJumping onto my body

Drilling into my orificesSizzling my body parts

Then it starts baring trembles

My mattress turns sweaty and restlessMy eyelids start shaking

I see a second trembleIt crunches its way lispingly through the air

Gradually it transforms into a whisperI can feel it crawling into my ear, like a little insect-fish

There is neither carpet nor desk in this room but there is an empty chair.

The curtains are made of thin red fabric.They allow for the light to glide into my skin

I see a fish vibrating, as if it was spoken five or six times, becoming a larger or, rather, a thicker word.

It swims through the hallways of my body and just before it slips inside one of the other rooms, it explodes - in a rather dull way – into, surely hundreds of smaller words:

The words spread and try to glib, or rather slip into different rooms.

In this room, all sorts of words swim. Some devour and stuff themselves daily with light

One of the thicker fish lives here with me

From the mouth of this fat fish, sometimes a thin fish crawls,crackling and giggling,

The Black CityFemale sounds reached the territory of the black cityThey speak to the fish while sliding, gliding, sneaking and slitting into mute buildingsThe fish have no organsStill they whisper, and through themThe buildings crack,The bricks lament, The city moans From afar, other sounds approachAnd from further away? Even more sounds: groans and rattles And then, there are the whispers again, sneaking into hallways, hiding in storage rooms where they sob like little children There they transform again into fishThe fish sob, groan and moan too, like sad women The female sounds stroke their cheeksThe fish hum while baring organs The organs speak a mute language – understood only by the buildings The fish, whisper,The buildings crack, The bricks lamentFemale sounds exit again the territory of the black cityPlease like and share Zombie Logic Press on Facebook